Fall/Winter 2016-17

John Madden

U.K. director John Madden discusses working in tight quarters on Miss Sloane.

BY BRANDON KYLE GOCO


John Madden and Jessica Chastain on set for Miss Sloane(Photo: Kerry Hayes)

The filmmakers found space on a University campus that doubled as a caucus room in the U.S. Senate where a Congressional hearing that forms one of the narrative strands in Miss Sloane was filmed.

"It was actually a terrific location in many ways, but it was itself quite small," recounts director John Madden. "But the access that we had to it was limited to the room itself and a room at the side barely big enough to get video village in. It forced you into extraordinary pretzel-like contortions trying to map out the shooting. And other than that, we had to take everything outside the building because there were classes going on in the building we were in, which they wouldn't disrupt."

Considering the amount of shooting required, Madden and company were able to accomplish their task in three days. "We had a very, exacting schedule, particularly for Jessica Chastain. It got to a farcical point towards the end of the entire process where I was in the room with them, we're basically running two or three cameras, and I was simply having to yell out the directions while we were doing it. There simply wasn't time to set it up properly. So I just decided to kind of manage it guerrilla style at the very end."